The Conversational Intolerance

KnightofBuddha

From Wikipedia

Conversational intolerance
Harris freely admits that he is advocating a form of intolerance, but not, as he puts it, the kind of intolerance that led to the Gulag. Rather he is arguing for a conversational intolerance, one in which we require in our everyday discourse that people's convictions really scale with the available evidence. He feels that the time has come to demand intellectual honesty right across the board, and ignore the prevailing taboos and political correctness which, in his view, appear to prevent us from openly criticising religion.

Harris observes that these are the rules which seem to apply to every other field of knowledge. He notes that we are rarely admonished simply to respect someone's views on, say, physics or history; instead, we both demand reasons and expect evidence. Anyone who so fails to substantiate their viewpoint, he suggests, is quickly marginalized from the conversation on those topics. So Harris believes that the tolerance afforded to the spectrum of competing religious ideologies comprises a double standard which, following the events of September 11, he feels we can no longer afford to maintain.

Many of you know the now quite popular and often loathed Sam Harris. He has two best-selling books out right now; "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." Harris does in fact advocate a certain degree of intolerance.

But we must ask ourselves...Is this really a bad thing? Especially when dealing with religious extremism. I mean dialogue just does not work with people who want a world theocracy and would like to eliminate an entire ethnic group.

Harris feels that all around tolerance makes it more difficult to criticize faith-based extremism. He sees respect for faith as a major obstacle of ridding the world of extremists.

Agree?

Simonthepilgrim

Knight of Buddha wrote:

Many of you know the now quite popular and often loathed Sam Harris. He has two best-selling books out right now; "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." Harris does in fact advocate a certain degree of intolerance.

But we must ask ourselves...Is this really a bad thing? Especially when dealing with religious extremism. I mean dialogue just does not work with people who want a world theocracy and would like to eliminate an entire ethnic group.

Harris feels that all around tolerance makes it more difficult to criticize faith-based extremism. He sees respect for faith as a major obstacle of ridding the world of extremists.

Agree?

I haven't read any of his stuff, although the name is vaguely familiar. What he says in the Wikipedia article is certainly worth considering. What, I think, he is calling for is a clearer understanding of the level of our interactions. If we are on a dating site, there is little point in discussing the paramitas. He is, I think in error when he thinks that all our internet discourse can be held to the highest criteria of some DWEM rhetorical structure (DWEM: Dead White European Male).

Some of us may have suffered the incredible rudeness and ad personam et hominem insults thrown around in the academic and scientific worlds. And there are few if any 'moderators'.

I think that there is a debate going on which tries to define what are the limits of tolerance in discourse as in inter-cultural life. I'm not sure that there is yet the critical mass necessary to impose one model or another on the majority, yet.

Magwang

Sam Harris - and this idea that Atheism should no longer polite - was profiled in more detail in a recent cover story in Wired that I read recently. They go after Theism with a religious zeal, saying that religion is no longer beneficial to the very survival of mankind.

The New Atheism
A band of intellectual brothers is mounting a crusade against belief in God. Are they winning converts, or merely preaching to the choir?
By Gary Wolf

MY FRIENDS, I MUST ASK YOU AN IMPORTANT QUESTION TODAY: Where do you stand on God?

It's a question you may prefer not to be asked. But I'm afraid I have no choice. We find ourselves, this very autumn, three and a half centuries after the intellectual martyrdom of Galileo, caught up in a struggle of ultimate importance, when each one of us must make a commitment. It is time to declare our position.

This is the challenge posed by the New Atheists. We are called upon, we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth; we are called out, we fence-sitters, and told to help exorcise this debilitating curse: the curse of faith.

The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.

Three writers have sounded this call to arms. They are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. A few months ago, I set out to talk with them. I wanted to find out what it would mean to enlist in the war against faith.

Click here to read the whole article in Wired

::

Iawa

Sounds like the stirrings of the next religious cult. The thing about so- called aetheists is that they draw so much attention to that which they are against, that they rekindle nostaglia in the hearts of the once firm believers, and rekindle flames long forgotten.

Have you checked out the New Church of Yo?

http://www.yoism.org/

quote from site:
"People who only see one side of things
Engage in quarrels and disputes."
~ The Buddha ~
In the Tittha Sutta (Ud VI.4), after reciting
The Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant

KnightofBuddha

Can't this be seen only as a good thing that a very small percentage of American culture is standing up against long held notions and blind faith? It is about time religion is being held accountable for thousands of years of brainwashing.

Iawa

I see it as inevitable. The pain the US is feeling is that the same group that pushed for Globalization are now regetting it , because it threatens their gluttonous lifestyles.